From DoomWiki.org

(another test account created)
(temporary post for anniversary observance)
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<table><tr><td>[[File:Red information icon with gradient background.svg|40px]]</td><td style="padding: 0 5px">If you came here because you are '''PISSED OFF''' about my admin actions or my edits, good.&nbsp; [https://doomwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Doom_Wiki:Central_Processing&action=edit&section=new&preloadtitle=Ryan+W+is+an+asshole Click here] to request sanctions.</td></tr></table></div>
 
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This wiki has outgrown me over the years, and I'm uncertain how I can help.&nbsp; I am neither part of the Doom community nor a competent FPS player; mostly I've organized and summarized research by others.&nbsp; Let's also remember that Wikia's maintenance is my fault &mdash; note the timestamps [https://doomwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=30%2C000_Levels&year=&month=-1&tagfilter=] [https://doomwiki.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Ryan_W&oldid=79253#30.2C000_Levels] [http://community.wikia.com/index.php?title=Forum%3AAR%3AAdoption_request_for_Doom_Wiki&action=history&year=2012&month=-1&tagfilter=].&nbsp; At the very least, if you have a general question, try [https://doomwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Doom_Wiki:Central_Processing&action=edit&section=new here] or [https://www.doomworld.com/forum/1-doom-general/ here].
 
  
=== To-do list ===
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== 1994: Man's civilization is cast in ruins. ==
  
<ul><li>Make it easier for other Doomers, steeped in deathmatching or modding or community history, to edit:
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I've been looking at [[Usenet]] conversations from [[Timeline of mod releases#1994|1994]], trying to learn which mods stood out from the crowd [[1994 level|in the earliest days]].  ''10 Years of Doom'' listed [[Top_100_WADs_of_All_Time#1994|the "best" releases]], but a gaming experience can be memorable for {{wp|3-D WorldRunner|other reasons}}; I'm looking for the levels that did something sloppily for the first time, and the levels people played for hours despite their production values. (Or perhaps because of them, the way you find yourself watching the same {{wp|Ninjas in popular culture|ninja movie}} daily for an entire summer.)
<ul><li>Standardize [[User:Ryan W/Maintenance|boring scut work]] so that occasional contributors never have to think about it.</li>
 
<li>Stop users being hounded off the site based on "policies" that don't exist, are clearly disputed, or were written by one person a decade ago without discussion.</li>
 
<li>Update the FAQ and make it short enough to consider reading.</li></ul></li>
 
<li>For topics I know a little about (mostly [[Vanilla Doom|vanilla]] gameplay and associated [[Special:PermaLink/61280|levels]]), make all articles complete, [[Doom Wiki:Style|polished]], and easily navigable.</li>
 
<li>For topics I know nothing about, find experts.&nbsp; I've no clue how to actually go about this &mdash; we are an all-volunteer project with none of the rewards of a forum or social media, so we can't just guilt-trip people to donate their time.&nbsp; The current level of participation is unsustainable, however, and we know that collaboration among experts [[zdoom:Main Page|can occur]].</li></ul>
 
  
=== About being an [[Doom Wiki:Administrators|administrator]] ===
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I plan to start [[Talk:1994 level#Prominent 1994 levels|a handful of new articles]], and any [[Doom Wiki:Policies and guidelines#Things that may have articles|notability]] questions can be raised in the usual manner.  First, though, a few things not often discussed about 1994:
  
[[User talk:Ryan W/2007#Sysop|In 2007]], this was purely a technical position.&nbsp; I was permitted to do obvious and tedious tasks (deleting someone's vacation photos, cleaning up my test templates, banning neo-Nazis) without filing paperwork each time.&nbsp; In return, if I didn't comprehend some of my new tools, I was expected to ask for help before [[Doom Wiki:Central Processing/2014#Misuse of Interwiki extension|breaking anything]].
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<ul>
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<li> Just scrolling through subject lines at the start was a bit surreal. They look like banner ads for dating services, only instead of local singles, they list [[Deathmatch|DM]] opponents by area code. </li>
  
Since the {{dwforums|id=52973|title=fork}}, its meaning has changed to be more like a forum mod: enforcing an overall project "vision" above and beyond stated consensus, teaching new users about contributing, maintaining relationships with the rest of the internet.&nbsp; I don't believe I'm at all qualified for these, and I certainly don't meet [[Doom Wiki:Central Processing/2015#Openings for new admins|the criteria]] from the most recent thread.&nbsp; As of July 2017, I think I'm doing a VERY VERY SMALL amount of good (spam, page moves, system message typos), but obviously I could be wrong.
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<li> [https://groups.google.com/group/alt.games.doom/msg/41cf3a31f02d321a Simon Travaglia was around in those days...] </li>
  
=== Terms from Doctor Who that I overuse and probably should be reverted ===
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<li> In January 1994, [http://groups.google.com/group/alt.games.doom/browse_thread/thread/27c33c5d41efee3a# a primitive Thing randomizer] promised to add endless replayability to Doom.  (The difficulty tended to get out of control.) </li>
  
''Season 12:''&nbsp; absorb, ampoule, carthorse, constitution, countersigned, fail-safe, ham-fisted, infirmary, subsidence
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<li> Originally, third-party [[Editing utility|editing utilities]] could only manipulate [[thing]]s, and the program didn't save the entire map into a [[PWAD|WAD]], only the thing locations.  Then, editors appeared which could change [[linedef]] and [[sector]] properties by {{wp|PEEK and POKE}} (e.g. [[Renegade Graphics]], [[VERDA]]), but not rearrange [[vertex]]es or create new levels from scratch.  So if you ever wondered why all those tiny maps in [[D!ZONE]] crashed your editor, and why others were just overstocked day-glo remixes of the [[Knee-Deep in the Dead|shareware missions]], now you know. </li>
  
''Season 18:''&nbsp; annihilation/annihilate, anomaly/anomalous, anticlockwise, automatically, calcified, cheeseboard, consul, dodecahedron, enquiries, hysteresis/hysteretic, nexus, out of phase, wild catastrophe<!-- Jeez, a vocabulary of 4000+ words!  Or was Chris Bidmead just putting himself in the shop window, assuming he'd be fired halfway through? -->
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<li> The first serviceable [[node builder]] appears to have been the fourth and final beta of [[DEU]] v5.0.  A few standalone node builders were released almost concurrently, at the very end of March; I assume this is because [[Raphael Quinet]] is a nice guy who shares technical information.&nbsp;&nbsp;:&gt;&nbsp; Right away PWADs began to rain from the sky: four, five, six files that first weekend.  (I stopped counting individual announcements at this point.)  Many users tried and failed to get the new node builders up and running, however, and eventually decided to stick with proven tools, even if their {{wp|Binary space partitioning|algorithms}} were less polished.  (Heaven help them if they were using [http://groups.google.com/group/alt.games.doom/msg/2856f7e1963543e6 this].)  Also, then as now, some decided it was too much work to download more than one free utility.  So if you ever wondered why [[Maximum Doom]] maps randomly exited with [[Error messages|I_SignalHandler]] when their vertex counts were large, and why you would occasionally lurch through a long [[Linedef|1S wall]] in an outdoor area, and how authors could [http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=398 knowingly release maps with giant HOMs] while claiming that they couldn't be removed, now you know. </li>
  
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<li> [http://groups.google.com/group/alt.games.doom/browse_thread/thread/14ec53aea04d5926 Human nature] hasn't changed much in 25 years. </li>
  
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<li> As I suspected, [http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?id=12875 this] may be the most innovative map created without a node builder. </li>
  
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<li> [http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=154 SCREAM] is an old friggin level.  That guy was pretty smart eh? </li>
  
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<li> Many people refused to install the v1.4 &rarr; v1.666 [[Versions of Doom and Doom II|upgrade patch]] when first released, because there had been so many hoax uploads. </li>
  
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<li> [http://groups.google.com/group/alt.games.doom/browse_thread/thread/446a0102648405b7 "For those that have been yearning to play THE alan, here's your chance."] (notice the avalanche of replies) </li>
  
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<li> [http://groups.google.com/group/alt.games.doom/browse_thread/thread/d2d26abef2dca3e7# "Regardless of what some of my friends may think, I am &gt;NOT&lt; an FTP site.  Nor am I a mail-server for DOOM binaries.  If I recieve any requests via e-mail for these files, I will not only immediately delete them, I will return a letter bomb."] </li>
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</ul>
  
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Anyway.
<span id="nonadmin"></span>Alternate accounts for testing [[Doom Wiki:Central Processing/2016#Navboxes wrap-up|display/config stuff]] and [http://www.phpsadness.com/ MediaWiki upgrades]:<ul>
 
<li>[[User:Doggerel]]</li>
 
<li>[[User:BarfingInterregnum]]</li>
 
<li>[[User:MuffinProvensen]]</li>
 
<li>[[User:DinahProvensen]]</li>
 
</ul><BR /><BR />
 
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<ul><li>''This page incorporates text from the document {{wp|User:Phaedriel}} (revision 476606966) on [[Wikipedia]].''</li>
 
<li>''This page incorporates text from the document {{wp|Template:Busy}} (revision 614922805) on [[Wikipedia]].''</li></ul>
 
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<div style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; text-align: justify;"><center>
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These are mods which looked notable, but not as notable as the types of mods I described at the top: WANTON12, TEMPLE11, WADPAK1A, MTFIRE09, DAEMON2, BARREL, STARWAR4, DARKNESS, HUNTE1M1, E1M1OSKU, FLASH, PEACE, UPLIFTNG, 23CASTLE, [[id Map01|IDMAP01]]. (I hate saying this, because those authors worked so hard, and I always assume we have too few walkthroughs here.)
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|-  padding:1em;padding-top:0.5em;"
 
|style="font-size: 85%"|'''This is a [[Doom Wiki:About|Doom Wiki]] [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:User_page|user page]].'''
 
  
This is not an [[Doom Wiki:FAQ#Why are you so anal about bad grammar / topic drift? This is just a gaming site.|encyclopedia]] article.&nbsp; If you find this page on any site other than ''<span style="white-space: nowrap"><span>&#100;&#111;&#111;&#109;</span><span>&#119;&#105;&#107;&#105;</span><span>&#46;&#111;&#114;&#103;</span></span>'', you are viewing a mirror site.&nbsp; Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user to whom this page belongs has no personal affiliation with any such site.&nbsp; The original page is located at <span class="plainlinks" style="white-space: nowrap">[https://doomwi<!---->ki.org/wiki/{{FULLPAGENAMEE}} <span>https://do</span><!----><span>omwiki.or<!--zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba-->g/wi</span><span>ki/{{FULLPAGENAMEE}}</span>].</span>
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Finally, a certain number of WADs had no maps at all, only [[sound]] replacements.  ([[Official Doom FAQ|Leukart's FAQ]] mentions these as well.)  I failed to convince myself that any of these were really as unmistakable or as widely used as the level WADs. If you were there at the time, am I wrong?
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'''[[User talk:Ryan W|Ryan W]]&nbsp; 04:02, 20 February 2010 (UTC)'''
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|rowspan="2" valign="middle" | [[Image:WMBarnstar.png|100px]]
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<small>''Updated and wikified: 17:08, 29 March 2019 (CDT)''</small>
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|style="font-size: x-large; padding: 0; vertical-align: middle; height: 1.1em;" | '''The Working Man's Barnstar'''
 
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|style="vertical-align: middle; border-top: 1px solid gray;" | For doing a lot of work on various articles that I would personally find very repetative to do personally. (All I see in recent changes at times are your edits) Thank you. [[User:TheDarkArchon|TheDarkArchon]] 02:35, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
 
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Revision as of 17:08, 29 March 2019


1994: Man's civilization is cast in ruins.

I've been looking at Usenet conversations from 1994, trying to learn which mods stood out from the crowd in the earliest days. 10 Years of Doom listed the "best" releases, but a gaming experience can be memorable for other reasons; I'm looking for the levels that did something sloppily for the first time, and the levels people played for hours despite their production values. (Or perhaps because of them, the way you find yourself watching the same ninja movie daily for an entire summer.)

I plan to start a handful of new articles, and any notability questions can be raised in the usual manner. First, though, a few things not often discussed about 1994:

Anyway.

These are mods which looked notable, but not as notable as the types of mods I described at the top: WANTON12, TEMPLE11, WADPAK1A, MTFIRE09, DAEMON2, BARREL, STARWAR4, DARKNESS, HUNTE1M1, E1M1OSKU, FLASH, PEACE, UPLIFTNG, 23CASTLE, IDMAP01. (I hate saying this, because those authors worked so hard, and I always assume we have too few walkthroughs here.)

Finally, a certain number of WADs had no maps at all, only sound replacements. (Leukart's FAQ mentions these as well.) I failed to convince myself that any of these were really as unmistakable or as widely used as the level WADs. If you were there at the time, am I wrong?

Ryan W  04:02, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Updated and wikified: 17:08, 29 March 2019 (CDT)